here and there

Friday, January 23, 2009

Spring Rolls , Samosas with Three different fillings

Spring Rolls, shootings, Samosas and dryer repair man Murphy

Happy New Year! As the New Year beginnings it does so in the hold of a cold weather, minus 28 and tons of snow on the ground. After a drive to Lina’s Italian Supermarket for appetizers for New Year, experiencing a scary ride home with a dirty car wind shield as the summer windshield washer fluid was frozen solid, my car has sat in the yard, frozen and unable to be started.. Driving has been difficult all holiday season due to the conditions. Since supplies in the groceries stores this holiday season seems to be lacking, my daughter and I had not been able to make springs rolls on New Year Eve as we had the previous New Year’s Eve. Consequently my daughter and her friend drove around on New Year’s Day looking for spring rolls. The next day in the paper, I woke up to seeing the first New Year homicides of 2009 resulting from a shooting at a Vietnamese restaurant on Macleod, a restaurant that we have frequented. Springs rolls became the order of the day! I decided to make the spring rolls out of ground chicken in my freezer that I had instead of ground pork. I made them the same as I usually did but since the taste in using chicken was not as favourable as the ground pork, I ended up making two batches and then a third as the tasting that went on as my daughter taste tested springs to get the perfect taste quickly reduced the pile of spring rolls quickly. The first batch was with Chinese instant vermicelli noodles and then I left out the noodles as the blandness of the noodles and the chicken needed more seasoning. I also did add chopped onions to this second batch. I use Doll spring roll wrappers and I seemed to be having problems with the wraps cracking and falling apart. I had noticed previously that if the package was frozen for a while in my deep freeze the wrapper were not easy to work with and lacked moisture in the wrapper itself. This time I had three packages all different ages and still all three were not easy to roll out into spring rolls. Even though the packages are sealed, the wrappers seem to dry out. I actually had to soak the wrappers under running tap water to make them flexible. The recipe I followed was similar to the restaurant in Regina that we frequented, but we did not deep fry them. My daughter, fried the first taste test in a caste iron fry pan with oil, but baking them in a toaster oven with and without spraying them with oil was just as delicious. Yes, we taste tasted as we went along. The next day at our delayed annual New Year’s Day meat fondue, the reviews were also great as well as my son’s fiancé who acknowledges the spring rolls in her own words as being “ actually good!..Spring Rolls Mixture

The day of our delayed annual New Year’s Meat fondue, the dryer‘s thermostat went and, Murphy the repair man eyed the rolls as I was packaging up them up for my daughter to take back with her, I causally asked him if his wife used the same wrappers for Samosas. Much to my surprise in his time in my house as he repaired the dryer, I received recipes and also a philosophical approach to life based on the Muslim perspective. . Before anyone can understand another person’s culture, i.e. master ethnic recipes, one need to first understand one own culture and especially one self.. Not a bad philosophy to start the New Year. This he repeated a few times as he had me write his recipes for Samosas. Before leaving this philosophy revolved to what was happening in the Palestine and that the Muslins will not tolerate having their religion diluted or disregarded!!

..Here are his recipes that he dictated and watched as I wrote them down

He had suggested I use the Samosas wrappers art superstore but I mentioned that they were pricey; he said the same wrappers I used for the springs could be used here too, as did another friend

The second filling used diced potatoes that were boiled and cooled, peas, diced carrots and the same spices as in the meat filling.

The third filling was using mixed lentils, cooked first and again the same spices.

Using the mixtures he also emphasized that they were the bases of other recipes... The meat mixture could be used to make what he considered the true kebabs, by adding bread crumbs to the meat mixture, one could shape the mixtures into circular or sphere shaped kebabs on a skewers, then BBQ them and serve in Pita bread with lettuce, tomatoes and onions for a delicious sandwich. He also dipped these kebobs into egg wash and bread crumbs to fry as meat balls.

He also used the fillings as stuffing for mashed potatoes. He would make patties from the potatoes and use the filling to be sandwiching between the patties, then fry the potatoes until golden..

He also said the same fillings could be used as a sauce for pasta. By adding some tomatoes paste, chopped fresh tomatoes and liquid to the fillings, this sauce could be used on cooked pasta.